Starting from Sunday 5th July the UK broadband ISP TalkTalk will launch a major new seven figure advertising campaign to promote themselves as the country's "brighter" phone and broadband company. The campaign is not expected to feature Tiscali UK, which the TalkTalk Group purchased for £236m during May.

The MarketingWeek report notes that the campaign will extend to Television by mid-August and result in TalkTalk's website being redesigned to reflect the new positioning. Though some would probably rather they spent the cash on service improvements.

Expect the adverts to contain a lot of neon style "light graffiti" set against night-time backdrops across Britain. It will promote TalkTalk's "bright ideas", such as their free local calls and safer online surfing features.

BT has revealed new details about its forthcoming £1.5bn rollout of next generation Fibre to the Cabinet ( FTTC ) broadband technology. The operator has also warned that the government’s 50p tax on all fixed phone lines will only be enough to help cover 80% to 85% of the country with fibre optic broadband, which differs from the 90% figure that they previously alluded to (here).

Past estimates have suggested that it could cost upwards of an additional £3bn to bring next generation broadband lines within reach of the 90% target, yet as reported before the new 50p tax would only raise approximately half what is needed. BT's own £1.5bn FTTC target aims to have 40% of the country within reach of FTTC by 2012, while Digital Britain targets 90% by 2017.


Naturally BT would prefer it if the 50p tax were to work in its favour, although the operator has noted that it will have no say in how the tax revenue is used. We suspect that the government will seek to spread it around, although sadly the plan appears to have a target without any real clear design for achieving the desired outcome.

The issue of fibre taxation isn't touched on either, which effectively taxes the rateable value of the basic fibre optic infrastructure. In addition it also favours larger operations (economics of scale), which can make it very expensive for smaller providers ( e.g. i3 Group ) to deploy next generation fibre optic broadband links.


Still it's not all doom and gloom today, BT did at least reveal a few more details about its FTTC rollout. We already know that the initial FTTC rollout will be capable of speeds reaching up to 40Mbps+, although BT has now confirmed that it will seek to "guarantee" a minimum download performance of 15Mbps.

Likewise BT will also offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to back this up, meaning that anything below 15Mbps would be considered a fault and require fixing. Likewise while upload speeds of 5Mbps to 10Mbps have already been touted for the trial, BT expects maximum upstream performance to reach 15Mbps before 2010.

Finally the operator has also confirmed that its previously announced "extended rollout" will bring FTTC within reach of 1m homes and businesses by March 2010 and extend to 1.5m by the summer of that same year. It's hard to tell whether this is really an improvement because of the limited details available beforehand.

We should also give a quick mention to FTTP technology, which often gets overlooked. While FTTC will be rolled out to existing homes, with VDSL2 tackling the "last mile" over old copper lines, FTTP is closer to FTTH in that it will run the fibre optic link directly into the building for speeds of up to 100Mbps (1Gbps in the future). Sadly this is generally for new builds and will thus account for only the smallest portion of BT's plans.

The USA based Hulu, a free online broadband video (IPTV) service that offers web access to hit TV shows and is backed by News Corp, NBC Universal and Disney, has reiterated its intention to launch the service in the UK during September 2009 and promised to work with UK broadband ISPs.


Hulu had previously said that it was in talks with the BBC, ITV and Channel4 to secure access to related content. However negotiations ran into difficulties when the group pushed to retain control over Channel4 and ITV's advertising sales around all of the content on its platform.

It's understood that Hulu is now offering equity stakes in its UK business, plus a share of online advertising. This is believed to be attracting ITV, although the status of other broadcasters is less certain. Hulu also has strong content competition from the likes of MSN, Blinkbox and YouTube to worry about.


Hulu intends to localise its UK service and thus avoid being perceived as a US focused business. It is also seeking to work with UK broadband ISPs so as to better facilitate its goal of delivering higher quality video. This would no doubt make some ISPs very happy, especially with the BBC's competing iPlayer already causing a few headaches and network traffic strains.

Mobile operator and ISP O2 UK has today announced the launch of its new chargeable telephone service - 'O2 Tech Support'. It costs £7.34 a month (or £14.69 on a Pay as You Use (PAYU) basis) and provides a "range of expert services" to help solve technical problems with Mobile Broadband , Home Broadband and Laptop related dilemmas.


The new service, which some might suggest should be providing within the normal support channels, promises to tackle issues such as removing a virus, setting up software, linking up home cinema systems or even connecting to a CCTV system. It’s probably easier and cheaper to Google the solution.

In related news O2 claims to have finally resolved a serious network problem that had left its customers without email access for approximately 3 days.

Mobile operator Vodafone UK has revealed a completely new range of tariffs for customer seeking to access their Mobile Broadband connections when outside of the UK. Prices for European data / Internet roaming usage will now start at £4.99 per day for up to 25MB (MegaByte's) and the same again if you want another 25MB. Those using less than 1MB, such as when viewing a 100Kb website, will be charged 50p.

The new tariff is significantly cheaper than Vodafone's previous £4.99 per MB and somewhat cancels the recent claim by Three (3) of offering the lowest mobile data / Internet tariffs for EU roaming (here). Three (3) had lowered its prices to £1.25 per MB, though Vodafone's new option works out as just 0.20p, provided you need/use all 25MB's.

The prices are in large part thanks to Vodafone's own network reach accross the continent and Europe's new roaming rules (here), which came into force on 1st July. Sadly for areas outside of the EU, which Vodafone calls Zone 2, that same 25MB will cost you £14.99.

Be aware that Laptop users, in both Zone 1 and 2, will need to take a double sized chunk of MB's (e.g. 50MB) for twice the price. Overall roaming remains generally expensive for the average Joe, although business users will be pleased with the improvements.

Broadband ISP PlusNet came very close to seeing BBC iPlayer (Internet TV) traffic on their service pass the 2Gbps mark recently. Customers of the provider switched on to watch the Wimbledon (Tennis) match between Andy Murray and Juan Carlos Ferrero.


The event apparently pushed iPlayer usage on the ISP to a new record high peak of 1.81Gbps, which accounted for over 25% of PlusNet's network capacity. The previous high was recorded on Monday during Andy's fourth round game when usage hit 1.66Gbps.

New customers that subscribe to any one of the popular O2 ( Be Broadband ) Home Broadband packages, including its BT based 'Access' package - for users unable to get the cheaper unbundled options, will be able to get their first two months of service absolutely free. This equates to a saving of up to £44.04, depending on your choice of package.

O2's Home Broadband Package Summary
Standard
Monthly Cost: £12.23
Monthly Cost for O2 Mobile Users: £7.34
Download Speed: 8Mbps
Upload Speed: 1.3Mbps
Free TXT's: 100 (Monthly)

Premium
Monthly Cost: £14.68
Monthly Cost for O2 Mobile Users: £9.79
Download Speed: 20Mbps
Upload Speed: 1.3Mbps
Free TXT's: 200 (Monthly)

Pro
Monthly Cost: £22.02
Monthly Cost for O2 Mobile Users: £17.13
Download Speed: 20Mbps
Upload Speed: 2.5Mbps
Free TXT's: 500 (Monthly)

Access
Monthly Cost: £22.02
Monthly Cost for O2 Mobile Users: £17.13
Download Speed: 8Mbps
Upload Speed: 0.44Mbps (448Kbps)
Free TXT's: 100 (Monthly)

All packages come with a 12 month minimum contract term, McAfee security software, "Unlimited" usage, wireless ( Wi-Fi ) router modem, free 24/7 UK support and no connection charge. There is also a smaller bunch of extras, such as the usual email services etc. O2 are widely regarded as one of the best UK ISPs for the money; the two months free promotion will end on 31st July.

The London Internet Exchange (LINX), which is a central network hub for much of the UK and Europe's Internet / broadband ISP traffic, has significantly reduced its membership, 1GigE and 10GigE port fees.

LINX's 334 members will benefit from a 20% saving in membership costs plus a further 7.5% reduction for those with 1GigE and 10GigE ports. The new prices follow those introduced in September 2008 when 1GigE and 10GigE ports were reduced by up to 25%.

Full details are publicly available on the new fee structure here:
https://www.linx.net/govern/servicesfees

Broadband ISP TalkTalk has created a new role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) and appointed David Cooper, whom had previously been the Chief Technology & Operations Officer for mobile operator Three (3) . Cooper will oversee the integration of TalkTalk's IT systems with Tiscali UK, the ISP it acquired in May 2009 for £236m.

Cooper will also be responsible for the IT systems used by TalkTalk to manage its 4.25m home phone and broadband customers, including its billing and customer service systems.

Mozilla has just released the latest version of its highly popular free website browsing software - Firefox 3.5. This release boasts the usual bug / security fixes and is also known to be considerably faster than the previous FF3 when it comes to JavaScript rendering; not to mention HTML5 support, location-aware browsing, downloadable fonts and private browsing.


Download Here:
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/

The European Union's (EU) antitrust authorities have today given final approval for TalkTalk ( The Carphone Warehouse , AOL UK , Opal etc. ) to complete its £236 million acquisition of rival broadband ISP Tiscali UK.

The outcome will come as no great surprise to either party since Tiscali UK had previously been teetering on the brink of Administration, thanks to a colossal pile of debt that exceeded its own worth. The EU concluded that the UK's broadband ISP market is unlikely to be negatively affected by the move.

The acquisition will turn TalkTalk into the biggest residential broadband ISP in the country, with a high-speed subscriber base of around 4.3m. However TalkTalk will need to put a lot effort into improving Tiscali's support and broadband performance, which is part of the reason why they’ve been losing so many customers.

Ofcom has today confirmed plans to clear the 800MHz band (790-862MHz) of radio spectrum, which is currently being used for the old analogue television (TV) services. The move opens the way for next generation Mobile Broadband services to utilise the frequency, thus delivering faster and cheaper wireless Internet access over an even wider coverage.

This is all part of the regulators 'Digital Dividend', which has seen a re-organisation of various spectrum bands to be more in line with modern uses and demands. Much of this frequency has been freed because newer digital services take up less room in the airwaves than analogue, leaving space for other uses.


It's anticipated that mobile operators, such as Three (3) UK, will now be able to bid for space on the 800MHz band. This could allow them to deploy both enhanced forms of existing Mobile Broadband services and possibly also future Long Term Evolution (LTE / 4G) technology.